A contest of ideas

Candidates and strategists are fond of saying elections are about the future.

And yet, for months, the races at the top of Iowa's November ballot largely have been about the two Ps: Personalities, and the past.

You haven't had to spend much time watching TV or tooling around the web to know that Iowa's crucial U.S. Senate Race pits a soldier who will bring 'Iowa values” to Washington, D.C., against a slick, out-of-touch elitist trial lawyer. Or maybe it's a Sarah Palin clone with extreme Tea Party views against a hard working Iowa boy who fights every day to solve problems facing average Iowans.

The race for governor largely has turned on the question of whether Gov. Terry Branstad's nearly 20 years in office are an asset or a detriment, a grasp for power or a solid commitment. The governor touts his accomplishments, while his Democratic opponent, Jack Hatch, spends much of his time pointing to Branstad's past mistakes.

We're certainly not suggesting that past performance and policy positions are not relevant or fair game. It's entirely appropriate to debate Braley's Veterans Affairs Committee attendance records, or question why Ernst suggested that the president might be impeached or that the federal minimum wage should be scrapped. Of course the governor's tenure and his opponents' legislative record are major factors.

But we're struck by how precious little time has been devoted to what these candidates seek to do over the next four or six years if elected. So much time has been spent re-litigating past disputes that the future has been shoved to the back burner. Hard-charging, big money efforts to convince each party's loyal base to march into battle have left many Iowans wondering whether this election has much relevance in their daily lives.

We see a campaign where winning news cycles and landing punches has eclipsed the need to tell Iowans what candidates want to do or why they want to hold the office they seek. We hear a lot about the critical importance of one party or the other controlling Terrace Hill or the U.S. Senate, but much less about what the winners would do with that power and authority. What's the plan?

Basically, this has been a campaign year dominated by tactics, not ideas.

We want that to change. It must change, if along with winning offices, candidates also hope to start repairing the public's trust in public institutions. And with Labor Day approaching, marking the traditional start of the fall campaign, there's plenty of time for ideas to grab the spotlight. There's still time to offer Iowans a choice of competing visions, not just competing accusations.

We plan to make that happen in at least the one small corner of the campaign that we control, and that's our endorsement process. We'll be meeting with all sorts of candidates before November, folks seeking offices from the courthouse to the halls of Congress. And we'll expect those candidates to bring ideas for solving problems, for innovating, improving and reinventing. We want to know not just what they want to do, but also how they'll get it done. We'll expect details beneath the sound bites.

Today, we're publishing a series of federal and state issues that we believe are priorities that candidates should be prepared to address, along with your thoughts about what issues candidates should address (see 10A).

We still want to hear from you. What issues and problems do you believe are at the top of Iowa's priority list? What questions would you like us to ask candidates? What solutions or ideas do you have that might inspire politicians?

We don't expect the campaigns and their allied interest groups to stop slinging mud. But we do expect them respect Iowa voter enough to explain their plans, in detail. The 2014 election, at long last, should be about the future.

' Comments: (319) 398-8292 or editorial@thegazette.com.